Corey's Story

Learning about the layoffs

Every ten years we have this kind of a thing go on. The thing that accounts for that is the change and the shift in the coal sales and also the shift in the priorities. Gas production has come way up but then when the price of natural gas goes down, then they’re not so up on producing. So they wind up slowing down production so they can increase the price.

It’s putting a hurt on people that work the day to day jobs because those are the people who ended up taking the big brunt this last time and basically it’s because they had overproduced for so many years. So it’s corporate America that is at fault for this.

What’s going on now is the price of natural gas (which they could run the power plants on) is at a low. So, it’s cheaper to run natural gas, that’s why they’re stockpiling the coal. They’ve got the coal stockpiled. Next thing that’s going to happen is just like ten years ago happened: they shut down the coal industry, they lay off all these people. Then watch, another year or so it’s going to come back around and they’re going to say 'Oh, we’re going to have to hire a whole bunch more people; we’re going to have to get all these trucks back; we’re going to have to get those engines sitting out there on the site back up and running and hooked up to trains and start pulling that coal round, because this is all going to come back around.'

What it's been like since the layoff

It’s putting a hurt on people that work the day to day jobs because those are the people who ended up taking the big brunt this last time and basically it’s because they had overproduced for so many years. So it’s corporate America that is at fault for this.

And yeah, the people are going to be like nomads like they have been over the years as it is. They’re going to move to where the jobs are. So if the jobs are not any longer in the coal industry they’re going to go back to the oilfields. If the oilfield industry not going to happen, they’re going to go into the gas industry or to ranching or whatever there else is to do, because, like I said, I’ve been through the cycle for about the last forty years or more and I’ve hired on at jobs for ten dollars an hour, worked my way up to as much as $20, $22 per hour and then busted back to ten dollars an hour and I’ve done that on four different cycles.

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